This is not evidence of the power of ideas. The USSR broke apart because after 80 years of trial and error the citizens own suffering convinced them something new had to be tried. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: "Experience is a harsh teacher but a fool will have no other."

They were motivated by the desire to ease their own discomfort as all human beings are. If they understood the idea of individual rights why, after Germany was reunited would they empower the former communist bureaucrats like Andrea Merkel?

Reality is not optional, even though statists tend to believe it is; the collapse of the Soviet Union is just one illustration of this fact (business cycles are another). Because Austro-libertarians understand this, we tend to arrive at correct conclusions about eventual outcomes well in advance of everyone else, as Mises did in the 1920s and Ron Paul has for years with his anti-war commentary.

I'm often tempted to print up a T-shirt saying "Libertarians get there faster," but am not sure how this would play out in the romantic relationship context ...